In today’s increasingly globalised world, no one nation has the leisure to conduct itself in divine isolation, nor is any single-narrative approach possible in internal or external policy. In this preface, the National Security Policy (NSP) 2022-26 launched by the present government has come out to be a comprehensive statement on the diverse, dynamic and hybrid challenges faced by the nation, while also laying an impression for the country’s expanding foreign policy presence in the world.
Today, within the global village, every government faces a loosening of control over its once insurmountable ideological and cultural boundaries; even the complete territorial integrity of a nation cannot be ensured as strong nations have constantly been entering smaller countries following narratives such as War on Terror or securing one’s interests. Unbound influx of information, proxies and non-state actors serve as change agents that are soddening all factors that conserve a society, creating skeptic uncertainty among its members.
In such a global environment, the sustainability of any state system depends upon its power to identify its essential vitals and its ability to secure its basic framework of thought and action in the face of ever-changing variables.
In the seven decades of our history as a nation, we have experienced a variety of avenues in our foreign policy. In harbouring the want of being a part of the US camp during the Cold War to the endeavour of remaining non-aligned and friendly-with-all in the 70s and falling back into US lap during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and lastly reversing relations with the US when it entered Afghanistan as an invader – Pakistan has had a chance to flex its muscles in a global range. And the lessons to be extracted from all this experience is based on the question of ‘how to balance between the realpolitik of a ruthlessly competitive global environment and the more intricate, human factors that bind a people into a nation and the truth-factors that are at the core of a content and progressive society’.
Internally, in the passing decades, Pakistan has consistently been a victim of several destabilising and disunifying factors, such as separatist movements in Balochistan, ethnic killing of the Hazaras that brings out the Shia-Sunni divide, and foremost, the plague of terrorism that has divided the fabric of the society through and through. The complexity of the challenges we face today can only be perceived by viewing the matter disparately in the global, regional and local matrixes and then relating them to the internal sociopolitical scenario of the country and eventually combining all that with the inescapable history of the people, keeping the humanitarian question in mind all the time.
The first tier of our foreign policy is therefore our immediate locality. Seven contemporary decades coupled with the 100 years of ‘how and why we became a country’ have amply stamped upon the fact that whatever happens in either Occupied Kashmir or Afghanistan or Pakistan affects the other two. These three people are inalienably related; economically, politically, ethnically, religiously and strategically. Time has proven that the security and well-being of any one of these states depend upon the other; if turmoil comes upon one, the other immediately feels the shockwaves. Therefore, it would not be an exaggeration for Pakistan and its two friendly neighbours to recognise the AfPakKash (Afghan/Pakistan/Kashmir) triangle as a single regional group or entity such that the security and integrity of each part is an existential necessity for us and constitutes the foremost interests of Pakistan.
The second tier of our foreign policy lies in China, Iran, India and the Arab world, especially Saudi Arabia. China and Pakistan have been enjoying a firm relationship since 1961. Perhaps it was the natural character of the two nations, both being non-imperialist and peace-loving, that encouraged Pakistan to temporarily hand over 5,800 square kilometers of the Shaksgam Valley, a territory of Gilgit-Baltistan, to China, in the Sino-Pak Agreement since 1963. Today, Pakistan is the major link of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and multi-billion-dollar investments are reaching Pakistan via CPEC agreements. Increasing relations with Russia has added to making the region more placid for Pakistan. In the present scenario, Pakistan seems to be nestled between an increasingly friendly China, Russia and Iran – with the Central Asian States anticipating an economic jump in an integrated neighborhood in near future.
India, on the other hand, always having harboured aggressive designs against Pakistan, has become more isolated, with Pakistan blocking it away from Afghanistan and Central Asia, and China putting its weight on the whole of its wide northern border. As of now, with the US failure in Afghanistan, India is left with only looking east, but even its east is infested with China’s BRI projects.
While India’s unilateral approach has isolated it, Pakistan’s multilateralism has paid off as it has gradually developed a third tier of foreign relation with Turkey and Azerbaijan, with Central Asia, and with possible regional allies such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Having equally friendly ties with adversaries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran is only a stamp on Pakistan’s successive multilateralism. Extending friendly ties with Iraq and offering solidarity with Azerbaijan in its recent duo with Armenia are all signs of an active, extended and pragmatic foreign policy suited to the increasingly globalised and hybrid environment of our times.
The NSP talks of a whole-nation-approach, one that would need an ideologically integrated people. For this there is need for a narrative of unity and consensus to be dispersed among the people. But sadly, while the government apparatus is trying to find integration and symbiosis with the external world, the same seem to be quiet lacking in the internal environment. Our mainstream media has a major role in this, as it is constantly thrusting shortsighted individualistic consumer thinking upon the minds of the people, and is keeping them indulged in petty politics of fraud and corruption. Nations are not built upon short-term approaches like setting low commodity prices or giving away charity money; they are built upon diligence and sacrifice and upon foresight and fore-planning of decades. Sadly, our information space lacks any message of a big picture – of the challenges of a globalised world; of the existential threats looming upon us; of the bigger prospects of integrating with the outside world; and of forming a new humanity-based, peace-seeking world order. There is mention of bread and bricks and no mention of spirit and the deeper truths of life upon which a National Security Policy – expanding into the securities of other nations and stretching into the fabric of humanity – is actually based.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 28th, 2022.
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